Given Intel and Nvidia's impending bankruptcies within the next month prior to CES, it's prudent for TR to hold off on recommendations.

Click-bait much? AMD to go bankrupt by 2020.

I love the TR system guide, even if I am not going to actively be building that cycle. But they have gotten a bit stale, you can pretty much guess how they rank components based off of their reviews. I just wish they'd break in to the SFF. They once did a 'dorm-box' that was awesome!

The options for SFF PC have never been better. You just have to be careful on managing your CPU/GPU combo within thermal considerations though. The move to 2.5" and M.2 media has had it much easier to manage cabling within a SFF chassis.

You just have to be careful on managing your CPU/GPU combo within thermal considerations though. The move to 2.5" and M.2 media has had it much easier to manage cabling within a SFF chassis.

That's not aren't even hard to manage in a decent mITX case anymore.

Unless you need a 5.25 bay, the NCASE M1 is pretty much the gold standard: compact at 12.5L, full size GFX support, choice of ATX/SFX PSU, excellent ventilation, easy to work in, fits a 240mm rad.

I've got a 6700K with a 1070 in one. Thermals are good, and the machine runs F@H 24/7 unless I'm gaming.

Not exactly the most taxing setup you could throw inside a SFF chassis. I was thinking more of the lines of trying to cram a Coffee Lake R, 2080Ti/Vega 64. That's a combined thermal output of 400-500W at maximum load.

Not exactly the most taxing setup you could throw inside a SFF chassis. I was thinking more of the lines of trying to cram a Coffee Lake R, 2080Ti/Vega 64. That's a combined thermal output of 400-500W at maximum load.

That shouldn't be a problem. My fans will barely ramp even with F@H CPU+GPU clients running all day. Even under load, the CPU+GPU only hit medium-low, and the chassis fans don't ramp at all. F@H would get the fans to the same medium-low speed in the old enclosure too.

I had some doubts about the M1, but I jumped when I saw other people were running 1080s in them (and the 1080Ti now). I can't speak to their noise levels though.

Next up is a Dan A4 case. I had to wait forever for that one, and I'm hoping to do an A/B comparison over the holidays.

I split this thread about Small Form Factor gaming PCs off from the the "What Happened to TR System Guides?" discussion that continues here:viewtopic.php?f=33&t=121604

I built a gaming PC in an original Silverstone Fortress FTZ-01S that featured a Core i7-6700K, a GeForce GTX980Ti, 32 GiB of RAM, an M.2 SSD, a slim-line Blu-ray drive and a 5TB 3½" hard-drive with an SFX power supply. It all worked fine, but building in such a tight space is more challenging than working in a more open case. The micro-ATX form factor still gives me another two memory slots and two free PCIe slots for add-in cards that mini-ITX lacks. Being limited to the Nitrogon NT06-Pro cooler in the FTZ-01S was a bit disappointing. In my recent micro-ATX builds, all-in-one water coolers have worked well.

Being limited to the Nitrogon NT06-Pro cooler in the FTZ-01S was a bit disappointing. In my recent micro-ATX builds, all-in-one water coolers have worked well.

That's about the same volume as the NCASE M1, but I can fit a Noctua NH-C14S. Don't even have to sacrifice a case fan since a thin (120x120x12mm) fan will fit above it. The trade-off is aesthetics; being a tower, the M1 just can't blend in like the HTPC designs.

It's really hard to beat 4x 120mm fans blowing cool air directly onto your CPU and GPU though. A lot of reviews ignore the fan mounts on the bottom of the case that blow right into the graphics card, but that's one of the best features IMO---I didn't need that last HD mount anyway.